The Valley of Dicle, which is located east of Diyarbakır’s city center, owns the Silvan Bridge in its north, as well as the Dicle River in its south, containing the rebuilt Merwani bridge.

Since thousands of years, the Valley of Dicle has been an important part of Diyarbakır’s city cultural artefacts. The Dicle River with its Hevsel Gardens and the Diyarbakır city walls, that are located within the valley, are connected to each other. The 700-hectare Hevsel Gardens consist of a thousand-year-old countryside and a unique landscape.

The Hevsel Gardens are known to possess the biggest green area in the valley of Dicle with its fertile and cultivated grounds that are supplying a part of the city’s vegetable demands as well as provide residents with employment possibilities.

The valley is offering shelter for many animals, amongst which there are the Euphrates softshell turtles for example, as well as a variety of birds that are crossing the area on their migratory paths. Although the fish species have had a hard time surviving in the river, they are still maintaining their existence and variety. But due to some destructive developments over the past 10 years, the Dicle river, as the main part of the valley, gets steadily polluted and damaged.The biggest issue is the waste water that is produced in the course of industrialization and agriculture, the Dicle and Kralkızı dams on the river’s upstream part, the sand pits as well as the fast and asocial settlements. These circumstances lead not only to the destruction of the Dicler River but to the devastation of one of the city’s important cultural artefacts too.

The Fortress of Diyarbakır and the Hevsel Gardens have been added to the UNESCO World HHeritage List on the 4th of July 2015, whereas the walled city and the remaining city areas of the Dicle Valley have received the statuses of buffer zones.